


Don't Touch

by Fenix21



Series: Rift [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief, POV Outsider, father/son tensions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 01:51:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4985392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>It clicked into place for her suddenly, the transgression that had been committed here, the memory she was intruding upon with nothing more than this simple human contact between herself and a stranger named John Winchester.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Touch

**Author's Note:**

> I felt a need to give John a little spot in the lime-light, but it started growing beyond its bounds in my head, and chapters don't seem fitting for what's going to happen here, so you get it in parts.
> 
> Outsider POV, still not my specialty, but if you want an opinion of John that isn't colored by rage and grief and angst, how else are you going to do it? And yes, I broke the all hallowed rule of not using 2nd person...a lot. I've always kind of held the tenet that you're allowed to break the rules as long as you know you're doing it.

Mandy sometimes wondered if a good prerequisite for bartending wasn't the Catholic priesthood. Lord knew it took patience that bordered on the divine, and you had to be able to listen to all kinds of shit without taking it to heart. She'd learned real early on how to be sincere but not become vested because you couldn't afford to put your heart out there for every chipped and broken soul that stumbled up to the bar.

She'd met them all, too. The pathetic excuses for place markers on the timeline that thought God and the universe owed them. The young, mighty, and immortal who thought they were God's gift to himself and the universe. The rough ones that drank too loud and too fast and didn't have the manners God gave a pig. The quiet, decent ones that often turned out to be worse than the other three because they were honest and real and wanted something in return, and she didn't roll that way. Not from six to two. Not from here behind the bar.

Then there was the last kind. The really rare kind. The kind that were cut so deep, scarred so badly, that they probably shouldn't even be upright and breathing, but that had something burning inside them so fierce and hot, if they didn't keep living and moving and using it up, they'd be eaten alive by it.

Like the guy at the end of the bar tonight.

'Get you another one?' she asked.

He was drinking his liquor slow and steady, pacing himself. He didn't knock them back fast like a man trying to numb the pain. Though it was obvious there was a lot of that under the surface. He didn't sip at it either like he was afraid of the challenge of the burn going down. He wasn't new to this. Four shots and two beers in, and he hadn't even shifted gears to loose and casual yet.

He pushed his empty shot glass a few inches toward her, lifted his gaze to hers. 

Still sharp enough to cut yourself on, she thought. 

She poured slowly, generously, smiled just a little. 'Man drinkin' like you are, I usually at least have a name and one offer of a marriage proposal by now.'

He watched her intently as she poured his whisky, didn't reach for the glass right away, just sat there staring at it for a second or two, mouth hitched up at one corner in something she supposed might pass for a smile if you squinted.

It didn't help his face any. He wasn't a handsome man, nothing anyone would take any undo notice of, and in the right setting, with his scruffy stubble, disheveled hair, beat up leather jacket and dirty nails, he could probably be taken for homeless. He smelled like smoke, but not from cigarettes, and old dirt, though she couldn't say why she even thought that last. He had circles under his eyes, engraved deep enough that she could tell sleep deprivation was a habit for him.

Taking all that into consideration, she was at a loss why she felt drawn to this man.

When he did finally reach for his glass, she caught a dull flash of silver on his fourth finger. Whether she had missed it before or he had been deliberately keeping it hidden, only to pull it out for the occasion of her, she wasn't sure. He held that half-twist of a smile as he pulled the glass toward him, and her breath hitched hard in her chest, snagging on something that tasted like sympathy in the back of her throat. Because married he might be, or might have _been_ , but he wasn't any longer, and that was a wound she knew not to touch. 

She nodded once in understanding and moved off down the bar to pour a gin and tonic for Merrill King, who'd ambled in from his law offices down the street. He was quiet tonight, had brought a thick Redrope expandable file of documents with him that he had spread over the end of the bar before she had finished mixing his drink. She gave him a quiet nod of greeting, got a distracted smile in return, and went to the shelves to tidy up and restock and keep a furtive eye on her stranger in the mirror.

Brooding was a good word to describe him, she decided. But self-centered as he seemed, the way he held himself in and quiet, like he didn't want to touch the rest of the world, there was a keen awareness about him, too. There wasn't a sound or a move anyone in this bar could make that would take this man off guard.

As if to prove it, a sharp, clear peel of laughter sounded from one of the tables near the front, followed by a quick yelp and a shower of giggles from her waitress, Katie. The stranger didn't bat an eyelash, but the momentary stillness of his entire body and the slow blink of his dark eyes said he had assessed the sound and its source and it was of no interest to him.

Mandy scowled a little over her shoulder at her young co-worker, who was willingly pinned around the waist to the hip of a beautiful young man. Handsome didn't work for him. He was beautiful in a way that, had she not been sure she was old enough to be his mother (and she'd have to get on Larry to check IDs a little more closely, 'cause this kid wasn't a day over eighteen) would have left her breathless with wanting. As it was, he caused a warm, welcome flush to parts of her that, thankfully, were not visible. So, she couldn't blame Katie for her weak struggles against her captor, or the way she seemed in no hurry to escape his company. She sighed, a little bemused, a little resigned, and decided to let it pass so long as the evening carried on at its, so far, leisurely pace.

She turned back to the shelves and caught the flick of her stranger's eyes in the mirror. He nudged his shot glass toward the front of the bar.

'John,' he said as she topped off his glass and set the bottle aside. 'John…Winchester.'

He paused on the last name, like he was debating telling her a secret he may regret, and his voice. Well, she'd expected something deep and rasping, graveled, but his was soft, the kind of soft that had learned to command with a whisper instead of a shout, and low, like a lover's would be in the moment before he entered her.

'Mandy,' she replied, mildly pleased it didn't sound as breathless as she felt.

He nodded, keeping his eyes on her face, but not looking directly at her, purposely not giving her opportunity enough to see inside. She shouldn't want to anyway. He'd come in out of the damp evening, a stranger in town whom she'd never seen before, and he would walk back out the same way, never to be seen again. She was somehow certain of that in the same way she was certain the sun would rise nine hours from now. Despite all that, she found herself leaning a hip against the bar, staying.

He'd flattened his hand on the bar top. His left, the one with the wedding band that looked old and beat to hell. Some might interpret that as him not caring about it or the woman it represented. There were different types of love, though. There was the kind you kept carefully, polished and cleaned and tucked away, to keep it safe lest it be damaged by the wear and tear of life. Then there was the hard wearing kind, the kind that got scraped and scuffed and cut up by real life, but never got put away in a box where no one could see, stayed with a person no matter what, no matter how worn, to say, 'I'm here. Always.'

Whoever he had loved, John Winchester had loved her with that second kind.

'She's gone,' Mandy said quietly, giving a glance to the ring. Because this man wasn't for small talk, and she wanted him to understand that she understood—whatever it was that was slowly taking form in her chest and making her heart beat hard and slow in the kind of anticipation that precedes an act of Fate you can see coming, know you can't avoid, and are sure is going to change your life forever and not necessarily in a good way.

The pain was old enough that he acknowledged it with no more than a flickering glance to his hand and an expelled breath, but that didn't mean it was any less intense than if it had happened only yesterday.

Don't touch. It was the unspoken rule in bars everywhere. Make conversation, flirt, give and take as many innuendos as you could stand, but do not touch. Touch was too personal. Touch was crossing the line, and Larry had politely (and not so politely sometimes) escorted customers out of the bar who had crossed that line with Mandy.

It was her this time, though. She did it sure and easy and without thought, like she'd known this John Winchester all her life.

He didn't flinch or draw away or even seem surprised by her touch. He let his hand rest under hers for a moment and then turned it to clasp her fingers in a calloused and scarred palm. It wasn't a hold she couldn't escape if she chose to, neither was it only a vague reciprocation. It was warm and constant, a grateful acknowledgement of the comfort and compassion she offered.

'Her name was Mary.'

He said the words like they told the entire story from start to finish in that simple phrase, and to a degree, they did. It was all of the story she was ever going to know.

It was odd, Mandy thought in retrospect, how sudden silence could be louder than cannon fire and a warning all of its own.

A shadow fell over the bar top and she raised her eyes to the beautiful young man who had been flirting with Katie across the room only a moment ago. Now, he was standing off of John's shoulder, lips set in a thin line, eyes bright and flashing, and the anger in the set of his jaw made him look like an avenging angel.

Katie was still across at his table, looking startled, doe-eyed, and bewildered. The few other patrons there were had fallen silent. Even the low hum of the jukebox seemed to fade into the background. Mandy's mind flashed on scenes from old Wild West films of that moment in the saloon before the gunfighter throws down his challenge. She would have laughed, but her breath was frozen in her throat by the ice in that young man's gaze.

His eyes were too old for his face, and the pain in them…so familiar.

The resemblance wasn't there until she saw them side by side, glaring at each other, then it was so obvious, she was baffled how she could have missed it.

'Dean.'

John's tone was whisper soft, a command and a warning. The younger man, John's son, Dean, twitched but held his ground.

'It's time to go,' he said. 'Sammy's waiting.'

John looked at him for a long moment, and though she couldn't understand it, Mandy felt like holding her breath against the wave of violence that was hanging precariously at its crest and might break over them both at any second.

'You go on ahead,' John said evenly. 'I'll be along later.'

Dean's eyes darted to where John still cradled Mandy's hand in his own.

She had seen grown men cry before, listened to them rail and weep over life and love and loss. She'd seen tears of anger, tears of sorrow, of hopelessness and pain. But she had never seen grief like this, and she hoped to never again.

He didn't cry, though the tears were there, balanced on his thick, spiky bottom lashes. His lips were pressed thin and hard and white, and his shoulders pulled back so taut she was surprised she couldn't hear the bones crack in protest.

It was tragic.

Not much in life rated a word like that, with so much built in darkness and pain and hopeless defeat, but the way this young man tried so hard to stay standing tall when there was obviously a fatal wound bleeding him dry, broke her heart.

He lifted a hand, his right, to cover his mouth briefly, pulled it down slow, dragging that raw pain, fighting and clawing every inch if the way, out of his expression with the motion. Her eye caught on the glimmer of silver.

It was another ring, very like John's—the one burning against her skin right now—a companion piece. It was better cared for, though, idolized with a different kind of love, that of a son trying to maintain one tenuous, precious, lasting link.

It clicked into place for her suddenly, the transgression that had been committed here, the memory she was intruding upon with nothing more than this simple human contact between herself and a stranger named John Winchester.

The young man turned away, hooked his coat with a thumb on his way to the door, and disappeared into the cold, damp of the night outside.

She felt John's hand slip away from hers, the barest squeeze to the tips of her fingers before he let go completely. He didn't follow his son, and she filled his glass again, watched him knock it back fast, like he had not done all night. There was a new pain about him now, one more shadow in his eyes, another pound on his shoulders.

Something had broken here tonight. Perhaps irreparably. 

She moved down the bar to get Merrill another gin and tonic. Don't ever touch.

There were reasons for that.


End file.
